She came home on a stretcher, a bottle of fructose solution dripping into her veins. Mary had already been loaded with a double-barreled shotgun-blast of every antibiotic she could safely take. Dr. McQueen rode back to the University in the ambulance with her, and with her husband. Lofting, holding the girl's hand, explained time after time that she'd never told him about the likely consequence of her removing her chastity-suit in an un-chaste world. The basketball player said he'd never forgive himself if she didn't recover. Mary was taken to the C.U. hospital. Wearing a sterility-suit, I attended her examination, which was conducted by my chief-of-service, the staff pathologist, as well as the hospital's internist and neurologist. I took a few cc's of Mary's cerebrospinal fluid back with me to the BICUSPID contaminated labs. There, to anticipate a few days' deliberate bacterial growth in media, her meningoencephalitis was discovered to have been caused by _Erysipelothrix monocytogenes_, an organism whose more usual victims are rabbits. Mary's husband could explain her coming in contact with so exotic a pathogen only by the fact that they'd visited the Brookfield Zoo on the second, and last, day of their honeymoon. By the time these technical details were known they were academic. The epidemiological problem had become secondary to the pathological. Mary Lofting had died. I was asked to assist Dr. McQueen and the senior pathologist at autopsy--I was, after all, a resident in pathology, and had besides a special interest in this case--but I found the job more than I could take. Mary had been a sister to me for twenty-three years. In tears, I left the morgue during the classic cruciform incision. * * * * * I found the Firebird in the library. I recognized her through the anonymity of her chastity-suit by the characteristic pose of her head and arms as she sat reading: elbow braced on the table-top, her right fist blocked stubbornly against the plastic cheek of her helmet, her left arm curved around the book as though to be a break-water against distraction. I sat beside her, and said, "Dorothy." Without a word she closed her book, stood, and replaced it on the shelf. We walked hand in hand out into the autumn campus. "Last year," I said, "it was Mike Bohrman, walking through snow-drifts in his suit-shorts, wanting for once in his life to feel the real world against his skin. So _he_ died. Five days ago, Mary deWitte married the man she loved. So she died," I said. "Our life isn't generally as hopeless as that," the Firebird said.